


Shatter

by primaryblueberry



Series: The Life and Love of Gellert Grindelwald [1]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bathilda Bagshot (mentioned) - Freeform, Child Abuse, Gaslighting, Gen, Manipulative Relationship, Panic Attacks, Possession, Prophetic Visions, Recovery, will add more tags if necessary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 11:42:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17043083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/primaryblueberry/pseuds/primaryblueberry
Summary: The first nineteen years of Gellert Grindelwald's life, if being a Seer had meant something ... different.Or, alternatively:The making and breaking of a baby Dark Lord.





	Shatter

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I am but a humble gremlin playing in the sandbox of Warner Brothers and J.K.Rowling (Read: I don't own anything.)
> 
> Edit: Went back and fixed a lot of formatting errors that basically made the whole last part nonsensical. So sorry for the inconvenience!

When Gellert Grindelwald was three and peering into a glass bauble, he was suddenly forty-three and the world was pain. It felt as if there was a drill boring into the middle of his forehead, shredding skin and shattering bone. His eyes were screwed shut but he could still see- no, See.

 

In this dream, if it was one, Gellert did not hurt. He opened his eyes and Saw a man crouched in front of him, with one lifeless grey eye and one as dark as the void around them. The man slowly reached a cold hand to caress the underside of Gellert’s jaw and tilt it up, mismatched eyes meeting two tearful baby-blue ones. The man inhaled, a sharp intake of breath.

 

“Faszinierend,” he whispered, and reality seemed to explode.

 

Gellert screamed in horror when he Saw great empty cracks spreading across the universe (too big for any mind to comprehend, much less that of a three-year-old). He Saw the man beside him surrounded by blue fire, Saw fire and smoke and ash, Saw great metal birds that spat their fury down at the earth. The boy screamed out for his mother, yelled himself hoarse as the world broke and came back together, broke again and reformed around him. His head felt like it was being split apart with every break, only it did not reform each time only to break anew.

 

“See, Gellert,” the man urged him and Gellert did not want to See but he could not look away. “See, and remember. You can stop this, my boy, you can stop all of this. None of it needs to happen.”

 

He Saw a black cloud tearing a city apart, Saw rooms of children like himself in agonised contortions, Saw death, Saw death, Saw Death.

 

“The Hallows!” the man shouted, voice now far away as if he was speaking through universes, “Remember the Hallows, Gellert! They can help you stop this-”

 

The man disappeared, the world settled back down, and they boy slumped unconscious.

 

Gellert Grindelwald’s mother found him minutes later lying motionless on the carpet, a glass bauble pressed against his right eye with such great force that it had dug into it and shattered within. The healers were able to save the eye thanks to the promptness with which she called them, but its baby-blue colour never returned.

 

An eye for his Third Eye.

 

This was Gellert Grindelwald’s first brush with the Sight. It would not be the last.

 

~

From the day his Third Eye opened, even when it was closed, Gellert Saw things others could not.

 

There were cracks in the world only he could See, usually benign hairline cracks that connected everyone and everything like a web of possibilities. But there were some people, some times, some places where the cracks converged and formed shatterpoints, crystalline balls made with shards of possibilities, fragments of could-be's.

 

He heard, too, smelled, felt and tasted.

 

Too much, suddenly, everywhere, all at once. Smelled emotions, tasted fears, felt auras, heard thoughts. Too much, suddenly, everywhere, all at once.

 

~

His father was so proud, so proud to have a Grindelwald Seer in the family again. Against his mother’s protests, Gellert’s childhood was spend predominantly in front of his father’s important friends, asking him what he Saw and eagerly awaiting his visions. All Gellert wanted more than anything else was to forget, to never again feel the pain of his Third Eye opening.

 

His father did not seem to mind that no Grindelwald Seer had lived seven years past magical maturity. What he did mind, however, was the shouting and bleeding that always seem to accompany his son’s visions. There was a Stinging Hex when he woke up for every scream Gellert fell unconscious to, a slap for every soiled or bloodied robe and carpet, a whipping for an artefact shattered by a flailing arm.

 

Gellert’s mother could not stop what she did not know.

 

“You must be strong,” the man whispered to Gellert as they Saw the grisly death of one of their father’s friends, even as Gellert wondered what they would do to him when he was forced to tell them. _Impedimenta_? _Crucio_?

 

The man with a right eye like his own was there in every vision he had, But Gellert did not tell anyone about the man. He wasn’t entirely sure why.

 

“I know it hurts,” the man said and Gellert almost laughed, but he was cut off. “No, boy, I know. I am the only one who could know. But it is our price to pay. You must be strong. When you are old enough, I will teach you how to stop these things we are Seeing. How to control what and when you See.”

 

“Teach me now,” Gellert begged.

 

“You would not understand, it now.”

 

The vision faded soon after.

 

It was _crucio_.

 

Gellert Grindelwald was seven and had yet to display any accidental magic save for his visions, but to the concern of his tutors, he could cast what looked like silent, wandless _silencio’s_ and _scourgify’s_ and _reparo’s_ and _episkey’s_ before he even learnt them.

 

~

The next time he was called upon to See, Gellert remembered the man’s words and wondered.

 

He remembered the man talking about The Hallows. Were they something that could help him control his visions, stop the horrors he Saw?

 

The next time he was called upon to See, he remembered the agony of his Third Eye opening and forced himself to recreate the feeling, felt for his Third Eye where the pain was worst and forced it to open. He Saw a bone-white hand holding a long wand, a silvery cloak and a gold ring with a black stone on a filthy hand.

 

“I did it,” he panted at the man in front of him, “So teach me. Were those The Hallows? What do they do?”

 

“You did.” The man sounded reverent, awestruck. “I am so, so proud of you, my boy. You will be Greater than I can ever dream to be.”

 

The man took out his wand and held it out. Gellert gasped – it was the one he had just Seen. “This is the Elder Wand. It is the most powerful wand in the world and one day, my boy, it will be yours to command. With this wand, you can do anything you want, anything at all.”

 

“Anything?” Gellert whispered. It seemed too good to be true, but he suddenly wanted this strangely carved wand so badly, with a longing that threatened to sweep him off his feet. It was his ticket to freedom.

 

The man crouched before him and when their eyes met, it was like looking into a mirror. “Anything.”

 

~

Gellert Grindelwald was eleven, and a first-year student at Durmstrang Institute. His father had been reluctant to let his prized Seer out of sight, but his mother had put her foot down. She had not been able to save their son’s childhood but let him have a school life, a proper education outside of her own knowledge and tutors, she insisted. To keep up appearances, if anything. To build connections, to learn to interact with people of his own age.

 

In the four years since Gellert Grindelwald had mastered his Sight, able to See whenever and whatever he wanted, he had also learned to lie. The novelty of having a pet Seer who could not choose what he Saw and only ever reported grim, dystopian futures quickly wore off for his father’s powerful friends. And so Gellert’s father, whose own jagged edges had softened ever so slightly with time, finally agreed to send their son abroad.

 

A group of sixth-year bullies, seeing only frailty and mismatched eyes, cornered him in an empty classroom on his first night. They grabbed him and shoved him around, only to promptly release him in horror as the bone of one scrawny arm shattered cleanly through skin and tendon at a nausea-inducing angle. But Gellert did not cry out, did not even flinch or show any indication of pain. It might as well have been a paper cut compared to the agony of opening his Third Eye.

 

He healed himself with a little flick of his new wand (thirteen and a half inches (long but not long enough), hornbeam (obsession) not elder (never prosper), dragon heartstring where there should be Thestral hair, carved with runes instead of elder berries) and marvelled at the ease and precision of it. If even this feeble wand, suitable but not truly his, could make magic so easy, then what would casting a spell from the Elder Wand feel like?

 

“You may continue,” he tried to say but the sixth-years were running, running from this strange wraith-like creature who could not feel pain but could already cast nonverbal spells.

 

Huh. Gellert blinked and resumed his way to the library, ready to search for books on wandlore.

 

Gellert Grindelwald was eleven and books were his best ~~only~~ friends. But no would-be bullies ever dared to touch him twice, either.

 

~

Gellert Grindelwald was eleven and he could not stop Seeing. Away from the familiarity of his family home, his senses were constantly bombarded with sights too loud, sounds too bitter, smells too rough, tastes too bright, textures too pungent. The library quickly became his new nest, a little alcove he would retreat to whenever everything became too much, suddenly, everywhere, all at once. Each time, he would open his Eye and seek comfort from the man, even for a short while.

 

He was inducing more and more visions, always eager to see the man who would teach him magic far beyond the depths of his teachers – fascinating magic, darker and closer to the Void than he had ever felt before (after all, one had to understand something before they could master it, right?). It was when the man was holding him, right after another sensory overload, that he taught Gellert about the second Hallow.

 

“The Cloak of Invisibility can hide you from anything, even Death,” the man whispered into his ear. His voice was mellow and soothing, a pleasant contrast from the epileptic din Durmstrang seemed to constantly flash with. “In its embrace, you will be safe from the world, little one. Nothing from the outside world could find you, and what cannot find you cannot hurt you.”

 

Gellert felt a spark of hope and red-hot desire tugged at him. “Thank you,” he whispered to the man, and scrambled up to find books on concealment and cloaks.

 

~

His mother and father were so proud of their little boy, by far the most brilliant wizard who had ever attended Durmstrang, his teachers claimed. Studious, mature and wise beyond his years, so incredibly talented, an absolute pleasure to teach. His father had softened even more over the year and as he and his wife doted upon their son, Gellert thought this was probably what happiness felt like.

 

Gellert Grindelwald’s twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth years passed much the same way as his eleventh. He spent the holidays with his parents and eagerly returned to school each year, spending all his time outside classes in the little library alcove. The librarian adored him, letting him get away with far more than she would tolerate from any other student – eating, brewing potions, even conducting magical experiments. After all, the boy was so sweet and never made a mess of the books or broke anything. She certainly had more troubling students to deal with.

 

Over the years, Gellert found many shatterpoint books which he made sure to steer clear of, even when they ceased to be shatterpoints. What he did not know was that when the knowledge in them had been taught to him by the man in his visions, they lost their potential as building blocks in the education and building up of a Dark Lord who would shake the whole world by storm.

 

His Third Eye was used almost more often than his regular two. The man was so angry nowadays, but he always tried to protect Gellert from the rage, who never would have known if it was not for his keen sense of smell. Still, Gellert was always happy to see him and his aura always felt much softer and smoother after a while together, which made Gellert ecstatic – to be able to help, no matter how much, the man who was more a father to him than his own was.

 

~

Gellert Grindelwald was fifteen when his parents died protecting him, killed by a man they had denied his services to for the better part of a year. Just over four years of happiness would never be enough to erase almost nine of abuse, but his father's last sacrifice was undeniably one of love and his mother had only ever done right by him.

 

As he sobbed into the man’s shoulder, it was a small comfort to know that at least the most important person in his life, the man he truly considered to be his father, was still with him. Best of all, the man urged him to listen with hope on his behalf ringing like an angelic choir, like the voice of God, like salvation.

 

“Listen, Gellert. The third Hallow, the black stone in the ring you Saw all those years ago, that is the Resurrection Stone. Your parents are not gone forever, Gellert – with the Stone, you can bring them both back to you.”

 

It was almost too good to be true, but the man would never lie to him, and all Gellert’s senses knew, instinctively, that he was telling the truth.

 

But to find the Stone, to use it, he first had to understand the theory behind it. The man was all too happy to help and together the pale pair dove into the spiral of darker and darker magic – blood rituals, death magic, necromancy. Whenever he had time in the whole school year, and all through the holidays save for a funeral he attended in an unseeing daze, he learnt and learnt and learnt.

 

By the end of the year, it was almost as if the colour was being drained out of his body. His skin completely shed the rosy hue, freckles and light tan it normally gained every summer holiday. His once honey-gold hair bleached cream, then platinum-blonde.

 

His baby-blue left eye, on the other hand, turned sky blue, azure, sapphire.

 

If Gellert had taken a break to stroll through the library, he would realise that there were no shatterpoint books left on the shelves.

 

Even if Gellert had stopped to realise that the man was now coming to him – his Eye laid inert for longer than it ever had since his birth – the realisation would probably only have come with gratitude for further agony spared and relief for the near-constant presence of a stalwart mentor and friend.

 

Gellert Grindelwald was fifteen, and he was slowly turning into the man he so loved and idolised.

 

He had no mother left to fret at the dark purple under his eyes, no father left to joke about him prematurely going grey, no parent left to see that something was going very wrong. An Aunt Bathilda Bagshot sent a letter with condolences and offered her home in Godric’s Hollow, should he need a place to live, but it was almost immediately covered with dusty tomes and would lie unopened on the desk of its recipient for a few years.

 

~

Gellert Grindelwald was sixteen when everything changed.

 

He and the man stood before a blank wall that would seem innocuous if it was not for the pulsing crimson shatterpoint that hovered ominously on it.

 

Gellert was so frightened and his head hurt just being near it, but he trusted the man to never harm him. A little sacrifice was sometimes unfortunately necessary ‘for the Greater Good,’ as the man so loved to say.

 

“Remember, when the student walks over, do what we practiced to get her standing there.”

 

He nodded. They had been learning the magics of the mind, recently. Gellert was a natural at Legilimency and he could always rely on his hearing, anyways, but the man also taught him to shield his own thoughts against others, taught him the art of Occulmency. What Gellert did now know was that he did not need it at all, really. If anyone had peered into his mind, the constant background cacophony of his senses would mask almost anything else.

 

But increasingly often for the last month, the man had been teaching him how to talk so that people would listen, how to hold his himself and move to draw people in, how to make others do what he wanted. The man practically radiated charisma and Gellert did his best to emulate, body picking up the actions as if they were tailor-made for it in mind.

 

It was all too easy to ensnare his fellow sixth-year with a bashful upwards tilt of the lips and lowered eyelashes, irresistibly charming even despite his increasingly haggard appearance. Within a minute, she was standing right through the shatterpoint, still wearing a flattered smile.

 

When the man told him to use a dark spell, possibly the darkest spell they had learnt on the girl, Gellert’s heart stopped momentarily.

 

“What?” he asked dumbfoundedly, and the girl’s smile slid off in confusion.

 

“Do it! NOW!” The man smelled angrier than he ever had been, tasted urgent, felt tense, sounded desperate. The blood-red shatterpoint swelled even bigger, throwing the whole corridor into a crimson light.

 

“No,” Gellert hissed in shock, head pounding almost as painfully as it did when he opened his Eye, “I’m not my father! I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

 

**_“You must do it, Gellert, or we will never meet Albus-”_ **

 

The girl started to move forwards. “Are you all right?” she asked, frowning mildly in concern.

 

“Who’s- Never mind. No. I’m sorry, but I’m not doing it.”

 

The man was silent, motionless. The room held its breath.

 

“It'll have been a while since I’ve inhabited this body, but I suppose it’ll have to do for a minute.”

 

The next thing Gellert knew, the man was charging at him. He cried out in shock and threw up his arms but contact did not come. Instead, the man passed through him, into him and suddenly he couldn’t move at all.

 

He watched with horror as his wand arm drew back to cast the spell and tried with all his might to keep it steady, but his body wasn’t listening. His magic was welling up now, ready to be channelled even as Gellert pulled and tugged it away with all his might.

 

 _I am you, foolish boy._ The man ~~he~~ snarled in his ~~own~~ head. _This body was once mine. I will not let you-_

 

The idea hit Gellert with a start. Before the other him could react, he opened his Third Eye.

 

His body instantly crumpled to the ground in agony. Gellert had been hoping it would a distraction at best, but it suddenly became evident that the man, the other him _couldn’t_ deal with the pain of the Sight, _didn’t_ know after all, had _lied._ Tears of pain from both his body’s inhabitants gushed down his cheeks as Gellert ignored the man’s howls reverberating in his head and pushed away, pushed with everything he had, forced him out through his Third Eye back into his own universe and slammed his Eye shut. The world went dark and the last thing he tasted before he passed out was the scream of a girl for help.

 

~

Gellert Grindelwald was sixteen and his mind was quiet for the first time in thirteen years. A presence he had never even known to be there was now gone from his head, and it was as if the weight of the world had been lifted off of his scrawny shoulders.

 

Gellert had told the school nurse the fainting was an unfortunate side effect of his Sight with a beatific smile before realising he was still using the man’s lessons. He barely held himself together until she had left to turn and retch, the sound instinctively Silenced and bile Vanished before it could even hit the floor.

 

He stumbled up on legs that were shaky but _his own his own his own_ to the bathroom and turned to lock the door with a spell not taught to him by the man, only to find that he could not remember one, _did not know one_. Everything became too much, suddenly, everywhere, all at once (he remembered too late that his senses were prone to acting up even without an open Eye.)

 

The nurse returned an hour later to find him still crumpled against an unlocked door, hands trembling while they clawed at his hair as if trying to tear it out, great shuddering sobs wracking his emancipated frame.

 

The first time Gellert caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror, sapphire eye almost black in the shadow cast by his brow and papery wan skin stretched tight over a gaunt skull, it was too much, suddenly, everywhere, all at once. He threw up and almost fainted again but out of sheer strength of will only ended up crying. It seemed that was all he could do these days, cry and sleep and think and cry again. His mind screamed a constant loop of _why did_ he _do this, betrayal, why did Gellert have to lose_ him, _nononono-,_ him, _why, why, why?_

 

He spent what remained of the school year in the infirmary seized with panic attacks at any memory of _him,_ and the whole holidays straying from his bed only for basic necessities, crying and sleeping and thinking and crying again, seized with sensory overloads at any memory of _him._

 

Gellert Grindelwald was sixteen when he learnt what it meant to be unmade.

 

~

At the end of the holidays, a burning desire to live had seized Gellert (the first thing he _wanted_ for himself, the first thing he wanted that had not been introduced to him by _him)._ The best vengeance, he decided, would be to live and live well without _him,_ without Seeing, and by using _his_ lessons for the greater good but not the Greater Good. As he got up from his sprawl on the bed, a shatterpoint he had not even realised was there disappeared like fog in the morning light. And so, with the iron self-control that had won him his autonomy back, Gellert pushed his body to recovery. He shaved his head, ate more, slept more, ran and swam. He did not give up the Dark, was too deeply entrenched in it to pull free but he did teach himself as many Light spells as he could.

 

~~The only one he could not master was the Patronus Charm. Gellert hated, _hated_ that _he_ had taken yet another thing from him, so he tried and tried and tried, ignoring the ever-growing shatterpoint until he blew up his wand from an overload of magic forced into a Charm he could never cast.~~

 

When Gellert Grindelwald was seventeen and eighteen, he went through a series of firsts. He used his first _him-_ taught spell without panicking, visited his parents’ grave for the first time since the funeral. He got his first wand without _his_ influence: a neat ten inches, fir (survivor’s wood) with a phoenix tail feather core.

 

He rose easily to the top of his class again, unapologetically defeating all his teachers and even the principal in Battle Magic. It was so good to see their star student recover from his parents’ death, they all remarked and he smiled good-naturedly, thanked them, bit down on the truth.

 

When his hair grew back, it was in the honey-gold curls of his childhood. His skin darkened as much as it could under a Northern European sun, and though he would never be strong, physically, he wasn’t exactly frail anymore either. On some days, under the right lighting, his left eye could even be described as blue again.

 

He went on his first date at eighteen, with the girl whose life _he_ had tried to take almost two years ago. You know, closure.

 

By the end of the date, the shatterpoint she carried had healed over completely and Gellert had also had his first kiss when he realised that kissing girls did absolutely nothing for him. It was only when he accidentally saw another of his male classmates bare at the lake that he felt a very different kind of desire for the first time. _Oh,_ he thought, and then: _at least no one else will have to be saddled with my past for the rest of my life. At least I will never even have a chance of becoming my father._

 

At the end of the year, he was cleaning up all his books and notes with a litany of _ha this is actually useful, take that Evil Me_ running through his head when he found an unopened letter addressed to him, sandwiched between two dusty tomes. Curious, he opened and read it. Huh.

 

He wrote back that he was very sorry for only responding years later, that he had not seen the letter due to a bout of ill health brought about by his parents’ passing. He was, however, interested in visiting Godric’s Hollow if the offer was still available and just as a side note, he had read some of her works, found them fascinating and was quite honoured at the family relation. Not even a day later he received a letter back with an overwhelmingly positive answer, an abundance of ‘you poor sweetheart/lad’s and a red-underlined address.

 

With a smile on his lips, anticipation on his tongue, ringing in his ears, and adventure in his heart, Gellert began the long series of Apparations to England.

 

Gellert Grindelwald was almost nineteen and he knew he had five years of life left at most but for now, the next chapter of it was just beginning.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Any feedback is welcome, but please be nice. If you feel like I forgot any tags, please just tell me and I'll add it in.
> 
> \-----------
> 
> Crimes of Grindelwald left me with so many Albus x Gellert feels, tbh. At this stage, I have a 'When Albus Met Gellert' sequel in the works, and a third part with good ol' Tom planned out. Let me know if that's something you'd be interested in reading :)
> 
> Feel free to also come scream with me on Tumblr, where I'm also primaryblueberry.


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